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The Massachusetts Broadband Institute has made the first investment out of the $40 million bond bill that established the group, funding $4.3 million to lay fiber in Western Massachusetts.
According to director Sharon Gillett, this is the first major infrastructure investment that MBI has made since it was founded with the mission to bring high-speed broadband service to underserved areas of the Bay State.
Part of the $4.3 million will go to the Executive Office of Transportation to pay the existing contractor that is running conduit along I-91 as part of a current Mass Highway build-out to lay a massive 288-strand fiber line.
“That runs from Connecticut border to the Vermont border,” Gillett said. In fact, some of the $4.3 million has to go to extending the Mass Highway build-out to the Vermont border, as it was originally planned to end a few miles shy.
In the third part of the disbursement of the $4.3 million, “We are connecting the fiber to One Federal Street in Springfield, which is the major interconnection point in the area,” Gillett said. That will allow existing smaller fiber lines already installed in the area — such as the 53-mile Five Colleges loop that connects Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst — to link up to the new I-91 line.
According to state officials, the fiber along I-91 will branch out to 33 shared resource nodes in its 55-mile run, which gives providers access to the cable every two miles, significantly opening up broadband access in the area.
The ability to allow MBI access to the Mass Highway conduits came about from a law passed earlier this month that made some regulatory changes that could also bring in federal stimulus funds to the project.
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